


Warmth of the Dead

by Quillsandcoffee



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Fluff, No angst here, because god knows the book had enough of that, just them being happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29346186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillsandcoffee/pseuds/Quillsandcoffee
Summary: Vampires are cold and Bella doesn’t like the snow.
Relationships: Edward Cullen/Bella Swan
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Warmth of the Dead

The snow formed a soft blanket over the town of Forks. The trees, which before had been a dense forest of green, now canopied an umbrella of white over curious animals. It was cold out, the kind of cold that seeped through your skin and into your bones. It was days like this that Bella really missed Phoenix where winter was merely a slight breeze.

It didn’t help, either, when your boyfriend was like ice to the touch and insisted on cuddling.

“Edward,” Bella whined, attempting to slide out of the porcelain arms encircling her. “You’re freezing.”

“It’s hardly my fault you still experience the cold,” Edward protested moodily. He didn’t mean for the attitude, but it was difficult when your girlfriend stopped wanting to physically touch you for three months out of a year. “Why don’t you just put a jacket on?”

“First of all, it literally is your fault, Mr. Waiting-Till-Marriage,” Bella pointed out bitterly. She shifted in his arms, bringing her shoulders in closer in order to preserve warmth. “Second of all, you whine the entire time I do wear a jacket.”

Unable to deny the fact, Edward merely scowled out the window, hugging her tighter to him. Though at the beginning of their relationship it had been difficult for the two of them to be near each other, now that Edward had developed better control over his hunger Bella quickly discovered how addicted to physical contact the boy was. Sometimes she joked that he just wanted to be closer to her for her blood, but Edward never found the joke as amusing.

Bella crossed her arms with a sigh, settling back into him indulgently. Though if she really wanted to she could have made him let go, she knew that it made him happy and in turn that made her happy. She soon regretted this decision, however, as Edward slipped his hands under her shirt, his fingers icicles against her sides.

“Ah!” she hissed, arching forehead. “Cold, cold, cold!”

“But you’re warm,” Edward insisted, snuggling into her and leaning his head against the nape of her neck. He could hear the blood pulsing through her body, increased rapidly due to his presence, and this close up the scent was intoxicating. Strangely, though, he found himself relaxing into the aroma instead of being tormented by it like in the beginning. It was like lighting a maple candle. He smiled at the metaphor, knowing Bella would probably be less than happy about being compared to a candle.

Bella paused at the sentence. She knew vampires could experience sensation the way humans could, sometimes better even than humans, but the thought of still craving warmth yet never being able to provide it yourself had never occurred to her. She tilted her head to glance back at him, her eyebrows drawn down in concern. “Do you ever miss it?”

Edward’s eyes were closed, lulled to the closest form of sleep he could manage, but he opened them reluctantly at her question. “Miss what?”

“Being warm,” she explained, taking one of his hands into her own, intertwining their fingers. “Experiencing heat. Feeling blood, your own blood, rushing through your veins, a reminder that you’re still alive.”

The question underneath her sentence, do you miss being alive, was not hidden to Edward. He stilled, contemplating the question, and Bella instantly wanted to take her words back. Possibly that had been an insensitive question. It was difficult to talk about death with other people, let alone dead creatures that were actually dead. She squeezed his hand, a silent assurance.

“Sometimes,” he said after a while, after she had given up hope on him answering. “I enjoy being a vampire, the parts of it that don’t include killing anyways. I like being stronger than my peers and racing animals in the forest, or how mindreading lets me know things about people without ever having to talk to them. But there are things about being human that I miss, all the silly things like falling out of a tree and scraping your knee or the breathlessness of a first kiss. I miss the feeling of being alive and knowing that each moment might be your last and therefore having to make them all count.

“I do miss being warm, too,” he conceded, but then he turned her around so that they were eye to eye. Bella’s lips were parted in unconscious expectation, her face flushed, and if Edward’s heart was still functioning it would have stopped in that moment. His next words were honest and nervous but it felt right saying them. “That’s what I like most about you. Your humanity, flawed and unpredictable and… warm.”

Often it was Edward who kissed Bella first, a side-effect of trying to keep himself under control, so when she leaned forward suddenly and pressed their lips together it came as a surprise. His fingers tightened around her hand. Her kissed her back, tentatively, the kiss all at once gentle and terrified.

“Why don’t we be warm together then?” Bella suggested when they finally pulled back, her hands sliding up under his shirt this time and onto the taut skin of his back.

He shook his head at her, though he was smiling. “You’re very strange, Bella Swan.”

“As you are you, spawn of Satan.”

He laughed and the rest of the evening was lost to them.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at my tumblr: https://crookswithbooks.tumblr.com/


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